"I'm much too young to feel this damned old." Garth Brooks

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Weathering the 60 Blog

A little spark of kindness can put a colossal burst of sunshine into someone’s day.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m temping at an international law firm whose main office is located in Boston. The firm has several offices on the East Coast, including New York and Washington, D.C. Yesterday’s weather warnings for Boston and New York alerted those employees that they would likely be home today for a snow day.

Snow days here in California sound out-of-place. But I remember snow days growing up in New York. We certainly didn’t have the weather technology then that we have now, but if your mom or dad looked out the window on the morning of a school day, and you couldn’t see the street where the schoolbus was supposed to travel, it was a safe bet that the schools were closed. Snow boots and heavy winter coats allowed us to go outside and play in the snow. I distinctly remember coming back upstairs and allowing our boots to dry out hanging over the radiator.

Remember when we were carefree and didn’t think about the teachers having to make up the work missed by schools being closed because of snow? We were just thrilled we didn’t have homework that night! Now, of course, adults have to worry about the commute to work or school, what to do with the kids who are home because of a snow day, and whether there’s enough bread and toilet paper at home.

When I sit at my desk, I can see out of several office windows if I look just right and office doors aren’t closed. The big window to my left faces another office building and until noon, the view out that window was just whiteness. I’m sure it was the marine layer or smog, but it looked like it could have been a blanket of snow. For a minute, I forgot I was in sunny California. But only for a minute.